


Love Done Right

by raendown



Series: Uchiha Courting Rituals [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Grant Him Patience, M/M, No Wait Pray For Tobirama, Uchiha Are Weird, pray for them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-13 04:09:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14741729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: After having his eyes opened in a sudden - and violent - manner, Madara immediately begins his wooing of one Senju Tobirama.It turns out, however, that Uchiha courting rituals are rather...unique.Madara would say it's going well. Tobirama would say something entirely different.





	1. Chapter 1

It started, of all things, with a punch in the face. While most people might think such an aggressive act would be more likely to start a feud than anything else, those people probably haven’t hung out with very many members of the Uchiha clan. At the time Tobirama had no further repercussions on his mind than the possibility of a pissy Madara over the next few days, though he considered the future headaches more than worth the delightful crunch of nasal bone under his knuckles.

Watching his opponent reel backwards and clutch at his face, Tobirama chuckled and shook out his hand, keeping a sharp eye out for retaliation as he did so. His feet were already planted and his body in position to take up their spar again when Madara righted himself and just…stood there. Frowning, Tobirama squinted at him suspiciously.

“Did I rattle that tiny brain of yours, Uchiha?” he taunted cautiously. Rather than snap back as he normally would, Madara blinked at him with a startled expression and jerked as though he hadn’t realized they were still out here on the training fields.

“Oh.” A full minute of silence passed before, once again, he gave a quiet, “Oh.”

“Look, are you alright? I can take you to Brother if you need medical attention. You do look a bit like you just had your brains scrambled.”

“Uh-huh. Scrambled. I – you – oh.”

“Right.” Utterly confused but not willing to jeopardize the good health of one of the village’s strongest protectors, Tobirama took a fistful of Madara’s training yukata and began to pull him in the general direction of the Hokage Tower.

He could have transported them both there instantly but it didn’t look serious enough to deny himself the pleasure of parading his accomplishment through town. Given the opportunity, he was certain there were very few people who wouldn’t enjoy showing off that they had punched Uchiha Madara in the face hard enough to scatter his wits this badly. Truly it was a day to mark on the calendar and be celebrated.

It was, however, slightly concerning that Madara didn’t seem to be any more coherent by the time they reached the Tower. Perhaps he really had hit the man too hard? After all, it was frighteningly easy to push the shards from a broken nose up in to the brain and if Tobirama had given Madara actual brain damage then he would never hear the end of it from his sibling. Dealing with that level of moping would be a hundred times worse than any mischief Madara could possibly get himself in to.

As soon as they reached the building from which the entire village was run Tobirama led them straight up to the top floor and bulled his way in to an unsuspecting Hashirama’s office, paying no attention to the despairing cries of the secretary worrying over his lack of an appointment.

“Brother, I broke your friend a little bit,” he announced blithely. “Fixing him is your job. Enjoy.”

Cheerfully ignoring the sputtering coming from behind the desk and blissfully ignorant of the wide dark eyes that followed him out of the room, Tobirama strolled away as though he had nowhere important to be. In point of fact, he had many important places to be. But he had booked today off with the intention of allowing his mind a rest from the many heavy duties weighing him down and he’d be damned if something as insignificant as Uchiha Madara was going to ruin his downtime.

Still standing completely immobile in the center of the Hokage’s office while his best friend fluttered around him worriedly, Madara gave off a petulant whine.

 

**-**

 

“Izuna! Are you busy? I don’t care; drop whatever it is you are doing. I’m having a _crisis_.”

“Okay, first: is this like the time you had a crisis because the bakery stopped selling your favorite tarts or is this like someone tearing up some part of the village and breaching our security teams?”

“Worse than both of those – combined!”

Leaping out of his seat and rushing towards the kitchen where his brother could be found doing laps around the dining table, Izuna stopped and murmured, “Kami, this does look serious. Aniki, talk to me. What happened? How can I help?”

“Tobirama punched me!”

“He…?” Izuna paused, holding his tongue for a moment to compose himself. “You went to spar with him this afternoon, didn’t you?”

“Yes! And he punched me!”

“Ooookay. He hit you and…?”

Madara came to a halt so he could look his brother in the eye and impress upon him the significance of his words. “He broke my nose!” Izuna gasped.

“Wow, alright. Oh my god, Aniki, are you, um, are you certain? Is he–?”

“He’s the one Izuna. He broke my nose. I’m in love.”

“Now, let’s be rational about this Aniki. This is Tobirama we’re talking about so we’re going to need a plan if you want anything to happen.”

Shaking himself forcefully back to the present, dragging himself out of the fantasies which had been building up in his mind ever since he’d felt the cartilage around his nose crumbling under the impact of a solid fist, Madara eyed his sibling with a great deal of surprise. He would have thought he’d get a bit more push-back on the subject.

“You’re okay with this?” he asked. Izuna shrugged.

“I was starting to lose hope in you, to be honest. Who knows if we’ll ever find anyone who can hold your attention again if I don’t help you get old Tobi-fuck.”

“Take that back! I will not have you calling him rude names!”

“Aniki…you’re probably still going to call him more rude names than I ever will,” Izuna pointed out, to which Madara sniffed.

“It’s the principal of the matter. He’s _mine_ to make fun of. Not yours.”

Izuna hummed over that for a moment before deciding not to poke the beast too early. Instead he dodged around the corner to a small cupboard just down the hallway and came back with some paper and a couple of pens.

“Alright. Time for brainstorming. Clearly he made the first move so he’s obviously interested…”


	2. Chapter 2

On most days Tobirama was able to feel a large amount of pride for everything his brother had managed to accomplish, although he preferred not to say so out loud and encourage Hashirama’s head to grow any bigger. When they were younger he’d never truly believed that peace was possible but now here they were living every day side by side with more than a dozen other clans, shinobi and civilian alike, and this village his brother had wrought was doing better than surviving; it was flourishing.

And then there were the days like today when all the overwhelming miniscule details that raising a village took were enough to make him forget his familial pride and replace it with irritable exhaustion. He’d been kept up until well past the witching hour last night by a meeting with the Sanitation Committee about whether or not all public buildings should be required to have working bathroom facilities or if public cesspits would be enough. Honestly, it was as though they _wanted_ disease to run rampant through the settlement.

So tired was he that Tobirama had very nearly fallen asleep on top of the small paperwork mountain on his desk in the Hokage Tower when he felt something brush up against the side of his face. He reacted on instinct, shooting out one hand to immobilize the offending appendage and twisting it so he could snap his other hand around and down to produce a satisfying _crack_ that reverberated throughout the room. Only when his foggy brain vaguely recognized the startled shout did he blink open his eyes to check who the hell was touching him in his sleep.

Madara stood in front of his desk, now cradling his broken arm close to his chest with the other, and he was staring down at Tobirama with the same vapid, astonished expression as he had a couple of days ago when he’d taken a hard punch during their spar. Tobirama eyed him with suspicion.

“What the hell, Uchiha? Do you always go around fondling people in their sleep?”

“Fondling!?” Madara spluttered and turned red – in anger, Tobirama assumed, that anyone would dare to suggest he would touch someone he so openly despised in that manner. He seemed the prudish type, really. “I would never! We’re not quite _there_ , yet. Are we!?”

“Quite where? No, never mind. Tell me what the hell you came in here for and then get the hell back out of here. I was very close to getting some actual rest for the first time in too many days to count.”

“Right! Yes! I came in here for a purpose. Yes. Stop looking at me like that, Senju, I’ve not gone mad!”

Yawning, Tobirama rolled his eyes even though they were close. “Could have fooled me,” he slurred.

“Don’t think I’ll allow you to speak to me any way you want now! I still demand respect!”

“Mhm. I very much respect the fact that you appear to have incorrectly fastened your trousers this morning, if that’s what you mean.” Tobirama chuckled as Madara flushed an even darker shade of red and spun around to afford himself a small amount of privacy while he fixed his clothes as best he could with only one hand.

When he turned back to face Tobirama he lifted one finger and opened his mouth, worked his jaw silently for a few moments, then turned around and promptly left the room without a single word, presumably to seek healing for his arm.

Tobirama watched him go with a small amount of confusion but a great amount of relief. At least now he could return to his nap, hopefully without any further disturbances.

What a strange man. Thank kami he was Hashirama’s problem.

 

**-**

 

It took somewhat over an hour for Hashirama to finish healing the break in his arm, asking questions the entire time and whining when he wasn’t provided with any satisfying answers. Madara did try to warn him off with a few scowls but the buffoon had absolutely no propriety. Honestly, a man’s courtship should not be subject to so many questions unless he opened the topic himself; did Hashirama not understand what a private matter this was?

Madara was ready to burst with anxiety by the time he returned home to speak with Izuna. He found his sibling lounging on the couch with a book, which was hastily put away as soon as the younger caught sight of the expression on his face.

“Well? Did you talk to him?”                                                                                                     

“Not really but he did break my arm. He wasn’t even fully awake and he broke my arm! How did I not know there was such a perfect man hiding under my nose this entire time?”

“Wow,” Izuna said. “Things are more serious than I thought! You’d better get a move on or someone else is going to snatch him up. Do you have any plans?”

Forcing his face back in to a less sappy expression, Madara sniffed haughtily. “Of course I have a plan. You know the courting rituals as well as I do. I was thinking about taking things a little slower, sort of easing in to it considering our past history, but he’s more eager than I thought. Of course, I’ll need to do things properly. The elders would have a heart attack if I offered him anything but the traditional courting gifts.”

“Obviously. So, tomorrow then?”

“Yes. Do you think he’ll–?”

“Aniki, as much as I hate to say this about my own rival, there isn’t anyone else I’ve ever met who I think could be as worthy of you as he is. He’ll be impressed. Remember mother telling us about when she received the first courting gift?”

“I suppose you’re right.”

Snorting, Izuna brushed a bit of imaginary lint off the front of his shirt. “Of course I’m right. Between the two of us I’m the smart one so just listen to me and everything will turn out alright.”

He never saw the pillow coming towards his face but he did manage to dodge the small fireball and retaliate with one of his own. Madara had time to thank the heavens that his clan had spent the extra funds to fireproof the majority of their new homes here in the village, then after that he had little time to think as he chased his sibling around wielding threats and flames in equal measure.


	3. Chapter 3

It was a good thing, Tobirama reflected, that Hashirama wasn’t in the room at the moment. At least that would give him a chance to hide the body after he murdered the man currently standing in front of him. Perhaps the satisfaction to be gained would be worth all the blubbering he would have to go through.

At least if he killed Madara he would no longer have to deal with insults such as the one which had just been handed to him. Whatever food had once been in the bento box sitting before him – assuming that it had indeed been food at one point – it was no longer recognizable as anything but a lump of charred coal. Some of it was still curling with steam, mostly from the little broken chunks which suggested Madara hadn’t been very careful in transferring it in to the pretty little bento which served as a dish. Tobirama’s left eye twitched.

Without saying a word he looked up at Madara, who appeared to be holding his breath as he waited to see what reaction his ‘gift’ would garner. Obviously it was a prank of some sort, if not an outright declaration of war, but Tobirama was no stranger to those and he knew the proper ways of dealing with this sort of thing. If he gave in to anger it would only feed the beast. No, the best way to deal with this sort of thing was to prove how little it affected him.

Looking his opponent dead in the eyes with as blank a face as he could manage, Tobirama very slowly sat back down in his chair, regretting very much staying back after the meeting. He’d thought that the empty conference room would be a nice quiet place to get some work done but all it had brought him so far was the meal from hell.

Madara, the ass, held out a pair of chopsticks with fingers that appeared to tremble slightly. He was obviously dying from holding in laughter if he was already shaking with it – not that Tobirama cared. At least that would save him the trouble of having to commit the murder.

Keeping his eyes locked with Madara’s in a manner which would have intimidated the bravest of souls, Tobirama dipped the chopsticks in to the bento and snatched up a piece of charcoaled _something_.  Then he placed it in his mouth and chewed while mentally going over all the ways he could relieve Madara of his spleen without anyone even knowing it was him who had done it. It tasted even more horrific than it looked, the warmth somehow making the experience inexplicably worse, and when he swallowed it left a bitter residue on his tongue the consistency of ash. Whether that was from the burning it had received or from the ingredients used prior to the burning was hard to tell.

Although he came very close to throwing the lot of it back up several times, Tobirama did manage to finish the entire thing, not once breaking their staring contest. His reward was in the way Madara’s eyes grew slowly wider and wider and his skin passed through several different colors before ending on an unflattering shade reminiscent of cherries.

“Did you need anything else?” Tobirama asked, not bothering to hide his catty tone. Madara swallowed thickly.

“Nothing,” he said faintly, as though he could hardly believe what had just happened. Then he turned and wobbled out of the room like his legs had ceased to work sometime in the last five minutes.

As soon as he could confirm that the other man’s chakra had reached a suitable distance away Tobirama shoved his chair back and rushed for the open window, only barely making it before the disgusting mess he’d just consumed came back out the way it went down. He sent a few silent apologies to whoever it was that began screaming below, hoping he hadn’t hit anyone. Sometimes having good aim was a bad thing.

 

**-**

The moment Madara walked in the door to his home Izuna was on him like a leech, hands twisting in the material of his sleeves and fairly jumping up and down with excitement.

“Look at your face, Aniki! Tell me everything! How did it go!?”

“It was amazing,” Madara breathed. “He did so well. I was so impressed I couldn’t even compliment him or ask him to dinner or anything.”

“Damn,” Izuna whistled.

Madara nodded and said, “I know.”

“Not even mother ate the whole thing when father gave her the first courting gift! Did he look impressed? I know it’s supposed to display your skill with fire jutsu but he definitely already knew about that considering how many times you’ve tried to burn him before so…how did he _really_ react?”

“He was speechless!”

For a moment his knees went weak all over again just thinking of what had happened a mere hour before. Madara leaned on his brother until the feeling passed and then led the way in to the kitchen to put on a pot of tea, apparently their new ritual when gossiping about his love life. While they waited for the water to boil he coughed up the details Izuna was so eagerly waiting for.

“Brother, he was perfect. Tradition says only the bravest will eat the offering and he ate every. Last. Bite. I’ve never seen anything like it. Of course, he’s probably going to be extremely smug about all of this, the gorgeous bastard. I was quite surprised when he didn’t immediately start bragging.”

“What did he do then?” Izuna leaned forward across the table, hanging on every word.

“He asked me if there was anything else I needed.”

“ _Damn,_ that guy is stone cold. You picked well, Aniki, there’s no denying that.”

Madara puffed up with pride and smirked. Everything was going so well and he felt on top of the world, like nothing could possibly go wrong.

Except, he realized, that there was one small snag in the proceedings, one which he was certain Tobirama would also have noticed. Now that Madara had begun the exchanging of gifts and shown his prowess with fire, it would be customary for Tobirama to do the same in return with a large display. How was he meant to do that when his nature was water? How did the other clans usually deal with this?

The kettle whistled behind him, prompting Madara to stand and rummage for mugs while he wrestled with the conundrum – then he nearly dropped the entire cupboard on his own head when it came to him. If Tobirama could not perform a display of fire jutsu then all Madara would have to do would be create an opportunity for him to show off one of his water jutsu, something more impressive and more public than just a spar on the half-hidden training grounds.

And he knew just how to do it.


	4. Chapter 4

Up until the messenger came barreling in to his office chattering like a frightened squirrel, Tobirama’s morning had been going rather well. There had been no emergencies, he hadn’t made anyone cry yet, and Hashirama had been suspiciously well-focused on his own paperwork for once. All in all it had been fairly peaceful right up until the moment his office door had crashed open to admit a terrified looking man wearing a striped band around his arm marking him as a page.

“Tobirama-sama there’s been a disturbance in the marketplace. We need your help; please come quickly!”

He was up out of his chair and marching out of the office before he had the better sense to question things. As the messenger trotted along behind him, Tobirama cut through the babble and got straight to the point.

“What’s going on?”

“It’s Madara-sama. He lit fire to the side of that little bakery on the east side of the market!”

“He what!? That fool!”

Since it seemed the situation was more serious than he thought, Tobirama recognized that quicker action would be required. Without bothering to stop and bring the messenger along with him he reached for one of the markers he had hidden around the marketplace and stepped through space only to appear in the next instant a mere two blocks away from where he was needed.

Arriving on the scene told him that he didn’t quite understand everything about what was going on here – and that he absolutely did not want to either. Madara stood next to the healthy little fire he had created with his hands on his hips and a proud smile stretching from ear to ear. When he sensed Tobirama arriving he turned to beam at the newcomer, not an ounce of shame or regret to be found on his face. He was clearly under the impression that Tobirama wasn’t about to mutilate him.

“Uchiha,” Tobirama growled, shoving their faces up close, “what is going here?”

“I made a fire!”

“Yes I can see that. _Why_?”

“For you; why else?”

Left eye twitching, Tobirama nearly bit his tongue off chewing over those words. Whatever this idiot’s issue was, it seemed that he was in the mood to be sarcastic rather than allow a rational mind to help with his clear mental problems. Not that he would have gotten much help. Just because that innocent smile of his was surprisingly cute did not mean that Tobirama was willing to forgo kicking his ass over this.

His own thoughts jerked him upright rather suddenly and Tobirama whipped himself around to face the fire instead. Had he just thought of Madara as cute? Unacceptable. Now the idiot was invading his own head and that deserved a much more serious punishment. It was time to break out the big guns for this. Tobirama smiled a very unfriendly smile as he brought his hands together, gathering much more chakra than was necessary for dealing with such a tiny little flame. Behavior such as this called for the worst punishment he could think of: he would definitely be siccing Hashirama on this imbecile later.

Due to how irritated he found himself, Tobirama felt it was nothing less than understandable that he allow himself to vent a little against something he couldn’t really harm. The wall of the bakery looked fairly sturdy with its thick stone base, thankfully, so it hardly even bent very much at all when his admittedly excessive water jutsu crashed in to it, spraying the gathered onlookers and soaking Madara from head to toe.

It also put out the fire but at this point that was almost a tertiary interest to Tobirama.

“There. Are you _satisfied_?” he snarled in his antagonist’s direction. Madara’s face had a dreamy, floaty look to it.

“More than satisfied, yes.”

Glaring as hard as he could, Tobirama curled his fingers in to claws and stomped away without another word. Madara had always been an annoying little shit but it appeared his younger sibling’s sass was finally rubbing off on him. One more word out of him and Tobirama really would have committed that murder without regret. Every one of these incidents brought him closer and closer.

The image of Madara’s stupidly adorable smile haunted him throughout the rest of his day, serving only to irritate him further. How _dare_ that boob invade his thoughts in this manner?

**-**

Although he truly did mean to go straight home, Madara’s emotions were riding just a little too high on the success of his brilliant idea earlier. Somehow he found himself wandering aimlessly through the streets of the Uchiha district as he tried to calm his racing heart. Today had certainly been a day to remember. Between his intended’s response and finally getting revenge against that stupid bakery it was a wonder he didn’t float straight up in to the sky with happiness. Had anyone in history ever been as in love as he was right now?

Probably, but he easily ignored that thought. Clearly his love was superior.

“Madara-sama!” He turned at the sound of a voice calling him from behind to find one of his distant, half related cousins hurrying towards him.

“Hikaku,” he greeted with a short nod.

“Our whole clan is buzzing with the news! They say you’ve been spotted courting Senju Tobirama!”

Puffing up his chest with pride once more, Madara attempted a haughty look and hoped that his lingering soppy smile didn’t ruin the effect. “I am. Things are progressing wonderfully. He made his response to my gift today.”

Hikaku listened excitedly as he recounted everything which had happened so far, looking more and more impressed with every word. By the time Madara finished telling him about today’s successful events the young man was positively green with envy yet he still appeared happy for his clan head.

“I must say, I certainly didn’t expect to hear that things were going quite so well,” Hikaku said after digesting everything he’d heard. “Such an impressive jutsu today could only mean that he’s accepting your advances! You could propose tomorrow and he would most certainly say yes!” Madara spluttered with embarrassment at the very thought.

“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m not going to propose tomorrow! It’s still just a bit too soon. Tobirama deserves things done the right way and he hasn’t given me the traditional indication that he’s ready for that just yet. Soon, hopefully.”

“Well allow me to offer you my congratulations, Madara-sama. May your future together be a happy one.”

Watching the man bow, Madara used the time unobserved to pat at his cheeks and hope that he wasn’t blushing as obviously as it felt like he was. It seemed this courtship business would be the ruin of his reputation as an unfeeling man but he couldn’t truly bring himself to regret it. At least Tobirama was able to see how seriously he was taking this; if it was that clear to his entire clan then surely the whole village could see it too. It was a wonder Hashirama hadn’t tried to interfere yet, although Madara counted his blessings on that front.

Hikaku straightened and offered him a congenial smile, to which Madara harrumphed and nodded in his usual manner. Just because his reputation was changing didn’t mean he had to let anyone think he was going soft. Clearing his throat, he let his eyes slide off to one side and tried to affect the same old distant expression he generally used to interact with other people.

“Yes, well. I must be going now. Need to speak with Izuna. He’s taken a great interest in all of this, you see.”

Rather than wait for his cousin to reply, Madara spun on his heel and hurried off in the direction of home, where he should have been heading in the first place. He couldn’t wait to tell Izuna how well Tobirama had responded to him today. Hopefully his brother would have a few suggestions for how to proceed now that the courtship had officially been offered and accepted.


	5. Chapter 5

Out of all the places in the village that he could have been disturbed during his time off, inside his laboratory was probably the worst one. Tobirama glared towards the doorway where two different heads were poking in, neither of them welcome at the moment, and tried to mentally convince the both of them to turn around and leave. Unfortunately it didn’t work in the slightest and both men scurried inside with equally childlike expressions of glee. That Hashirama’s was much more innocent while Madara’s looked more like a weasel that had managed to sneak in to the henhouse only made it all the more worrisome.

After all the strange practical jokes this particular weasel had been pulling over the past little while, Tobirama was just a bit cautious about interacting with him. Yesterday he’d been offered some innocuous looking soup only to find it laced with ghost peppers. Three days before that he’d had to spar with Madara in the hallways of the Tower just to gain entry to his own brother’s office. At this point he was suspicious of every move the man made.

“What do you two want?” he asked bluntly.

“Don’t be so snide, we were only interested in what you’re doing,” Madara replied, just a little too easily for it to be believable. Tobirama eyed him distrustfully. Whatever his true intentions, clearly he thought a bit of sarcasm would hide them.

Possibly he had followed Hashirama as an excuse to snoop and make sure none of Tobirama’s research would be detrimental towards his clan – he always had been a little paranoid – but more likely he was only here to stir up a bit of trouble and make everyone around him miserable as usual. Honestly, how Hashirama didn’t see the idiot for the pointless nuisance that he was, Tobirama had no idea. It had been years since he’d given up trying to open his brother’s eyes to the truth.

“Hey, what’s this do?”

Tobirama’s head snapped to the side and he only just managed to pull his sibling away before he accidentally overturned a sealed tube of poison gas.

“Don’t touch _anything_ ,” he hissed. “The things in here are dangerous. You might have noticed the sign on the door asking that I not be disturbed?”

“Yeah but we were curious! There’s so many neat things in here!”

“Is this one dangerous?” Madara asked, his finger hovering just over a petri with something growing inside. It was only a culture of common yeast mold for experiments but Tobirama raised an eyebrow at him and told him in a flat voice that it was, in fact, deadly. The man edged away with a mildly anxious look.

“Brother, please,” Tobirama implored, setting aside the fragment he’d been holding over an open flame and rubbing at his temples. “How many times have I asked you not to disturb me while I am working in here?”

As his sibling began to whine and moan about how little time they had been spending together lately, Tobirama surreptitiously watched Madara while the man slowly made his way around the room. He seemed to be paying the objects around him a proper amount of respect now, at least, but it would have been better if he left altogether. For some reason every time they saw each other now Tobirama couldn’t stop noting how attractive he was and it was seriously impeding his ability to stay mad at the idiot.

Madara’s eyes lit up with something which looked a lot like delight when he came close enough to inspect the controlled flame over which Tobirama had been heating a vial of chemicals. His fingers twitched, drawing Tobirama’s attention as he tried not to reach out only to fail, hand inching forwards of its own volition.

Perfectly aware of the situation, Tobirama could have stopped what was about to happen. But since it was his lab and he had always believed in learning through one’s own mistakes he pointedly kept his silence. He watched Madara’s fingers reach for the flame and postulated that maybe he was drawn to it because of the Uchiha predilection for fire, even outside of their famed jutsu. Whatever the case, that didn’t help him when his non-lab-approved double wide sleeves draped across the knobs which controlled how much gas the flame was being fed and accidentally spun them.

The screech he let out when the fire jumped up to snatch at the fringe of his hair was probably the funniest sound Tobirama had ever heard in his life.

Madara leapt back with both hands patting at his face but when he lowered them to look around with wide eyes to confirm that he was alright Tobirama began to laugh even harder. His hair may have survived by sheer dumb luck but his eyebrows had not; they were entirely burnt off.

“Oh sweet kami, Madara! Are you alright!?” Hashirama hurried over to his friend, pulling him towards the sink in one corner and casting about for a rag he could wet to dab at the affected area. “Does it hurt? Can you see?”

“No I…he burnt off my eyebrows…”

Across the room, Tobirama very nearly fell out of his seat with laughter. Just this once it would have to be alright for him to allow himself to admire how cute Madara looked when he was dazed like that because this was definitely a moment he wanted to remember forever. Even with medical jutsu those eyebrows were going to take several days to grow back and Tobirama intended to enjoy every minute of it.

 

**-**

Madara set a personal record that evening by managing to hold his silence until nearly halfway through dinner when Izuna asked him how things were going with Tobirama lately. He’d been waiting for that question since he got home but hadn’t wanted to seem too eager by blurting it out himself. Even now a couple of weeks after this whole thing started he could barely think of anything else but Tobirama.

“He burned my eyebrows off today.” He was going for a sort of casual tone but failed mostly due to the way he grinned widely as he spoke. Izuna reached across the table to pound his shoulder in a congratulatory manner.

“Wow! It’s finally time, then! Things are going as they should at last!”

In all his life Madara had never felt shy about anything before yet he almost did now, lowering his head in a demurely pleased manner. Falling in love had rather quickly turned him in to a different person. No one had mentioned anything about his behavior as of yet but he’d already prepared a number of violent punishments to make an example out of whoever did first.

“So, are you going to do it tomorrow?” Izuna asked. “You’re already dragging your feet, Aniki, I’ve never seen anyone wait more than a week past the first gift to ask for their beau’s hand in marriage. I mean, do the Senju really stretch it out like this?”

“You know, it never occurred to me to ask. But he hasn’t told me we should slow down and if he wanted that then he wouldn’t have given me the signal, would he?”

“That’s true, I suppose.”

Both siblings nodded to themselves and Madara was grateful for the affirmation that he was on the right path.

“It’s decided then. Obviously I’ll need to tweak the final gift a little bit due to our different heritages. I’m not even certain any of the other clans have noticed that ours has different houses within the clan so I’m not sure he’d appreciate those crests but I’ve already figured out how to work around that.”

“You’re very good at this, Aniki. Much better than I would have thought you’d be.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean!?”

Laughing, Izuna abandoned his dinner and ran.


	6. Chapter 6

In his life there had been many times when Tobirama had uttered the phrase ‘last straw’, most of them threateningly with the rare soft joke thrown in to the mix. Today he snarled it under his breath with only the most violent of intentions.

This was the absolute _last straw_. Madara had officially gone too far in whatever stupid game he insisted on playing lately.

Upon waking this morning Tobirama had discovered all of his clothing gone, replaced instead with nearly identical copies bearing the Uchiha crest where he usually wore the symbol of his own clan. He had foolishly been willing to overlook many things during the past couple of weeks due to the increasing fluttering sensation in his stomach but no more. A line had to be drawn somewhere and he drew it now at the idea that someone had gone through his home without permission and thus escalated the pranks from a personal attack to a blow against his family pride.

It took half an hour to sort through the mockingly well-folded shirts and yukata’s to find one that wasn’t emblazoned with a red and white fan, forcing Tobirama to leave the house in nothing but a sleeveless training shirt despite the dawn hour being just a little chilly for that sort of thing.

When he arrived at the tower all was quiet – for now. People shuffled sleepily through the hallways only to leap out of the way with startled expressions as Tobirama stomped a path up to the top floor where he could feel a particular chakra signature burning away with a sickeningly cheerful feeling to it. Madara certainly wouldn’t be anywhere near as happy once Tobirama was through giving the man a piece of his mind.

“Uchiha!” Both his target and his sibling jumped a little when he slammed through the door. “What the _fuck_!?” His blood only boiled hotter as he saw Madara give him a blatant split-second once over and deflate with a sad expression.

“You’re not wearing any of them,” he had the audacity to say. He even managed to sound disappointed.

“Of course I’m not! Why the hell would I? You broke in to my home and replaced my clothes! You stole my personal items and left _insults_ in their place! How dare you!?”

“But you were supposed to wear them…”

Madara couldn’t seem to decide between staring at his choice of clothing with a wounding expression or staring at him like he had betrayed some form of trust between them. A ridiculous notion since neither of them trusted the other with anything beyond the ability to be aggravating but Tobirama couldn’t think of any other way to read the face he was making. Not that it mattered; he would hardly allow himself to be tricked in to feeling guilty for his reaction when it was his own privacy that had been invaded.

Drawing himself up, he settled his face in to the iciest expression available in his repertoire.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re playing at Uchiha but this ends now. Return my things to me at _once_.”

“Fine.”

Tobirama blinked, almost losing the edge of his anger in surprise. He really hadn’t expected it to be so easy. “Right, good,” he murmured, floundering a little. Then with one last scowl he turned and stormed away again.

All the way here from his home to the Tower he’d been crafting arguments and insults in his head. What a waste of brain power – and how strange that he hadn’t needed them. Arguing with Madara was sort of a constant in his life and, although the fighting had lessened notably as of late, it felt somehow wrong to see the older man capitulate to him so easily.

For a moment he wondered if there might be something about the situation that he had missed but it was only a very brief moment. Then he thought once more of the violation he had suffered and the anger came flooding back in, renewing the vigor with which he stomped towards his own office.

 

**-**

 

“Did I hear him right? You replaced his clothes?”

Madara nodded at Hashirama’s words, too despondent to form words straight away. He had been so sure that Tobirama would accept him moving things forward in the usual way. Where had he gone wrong? Tobirama should have been delighted to see the proposal clothing but instead it seemed as though he was calling everything off, breaking Madara’s heart along the way.

Staring at the empty doorway without really seeing it, he missed seeing Hashirama lean back in his chair with a thoroughly confused expression.

“Why would you replace all of his clothes?”

“Because it’s tradition,” he heard himself whisper.

“Uh…tradition for what? You know, Tobi _really_ doesn’t like it when people go in to his private space without asking. Maybe next time you want to pull a prank you should go for something less personal.”

“But it wasn’t a prank! Are you stupid? Obviously it’s part of the courting rituals, you animal, don’t you practice those!?”

When he lifted his head Hashirama was staring at him as though he’d grown several extra pairs of eyes, a look he didn’t really think he deserved at the moment considering how much he was already going through. His Claiming had just been rejected, after all.

“Sorry,” Hashirama said slowly. “I think I _must_ have heard something wrong this time because that sounded like you just told me you were courting my brother. As in, trying to date him.” Madara drew himself up, chest swelling with great offense.

“Well of course I am! Don’t you have eyes? Clearly I’ve been courting him for _weeks_ now – an absolutely unheard of length of time, I might add. He’s been responding very positively to everything up until today and I can’t tell what I’ve done to change his mind.” Since wrapping his arms around himself would have been much too juvenile, instead he slumped farther down in his chair and buried his chin inside the wide collar of his robes, using the material to hide the way he was gnawing on his lower lip.

“How about you explain it to me as though I’m a child who doesn’t understand?”

“It appears that you _are_ a child who doesn’t understand,” Madara huffed. “Fine. Perhaps you’ll spot a detail that I’ve taken for granted.”

As requested, he started back at the very beginning when he realized the potential for a relationship in Tobirama’s spectacular punch. The only other person who had ever managed to hit him so hard was Hashirama and obviously he had no interest in dating a man who was more like a brother to him. But that hit had opened his eyes to the possibilities of Tobirama and the more he’d thought about it the more intrigued he’d become, helped along by the way his arm had been snapped like a twig the very next day when Tobirama hadn’t even been fully awake.

Hashirama listened carefully to his account of the last couple of weeks, asking a few questions about the reasons behind certain traditions but mostly staying quiet for once in his life. At first Madara assumed he was simply playing the part of clueless child. Then he watched as Hashirama sat back, steepled his fingers, and drew a very deep breath.

“I’ve never heard of anything so strange in my entire life.”

“Eh? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Did it ever occur to you that different clans might have their own courting traditions and that Tobi might not even know what’s been going on?”

Madara stared at his friend with a sinking feeling in his stomach, admitting in a very quiet voice, “No.”

The two men stared at each other until Hashirama suddenly broke out in to a massive grin, both hands clasping together and his head tilting to the side, sending his hair cascading over one shoulder.

“But this is still amazing! My best friend and my brother! Don’t worry Madara, I’ll help you fix this!”

Madara wondered if he still had time to run. Surely Izuna would be better help?


	7. Chapter 7

“Forgive him?” Tobirama curled his upper half around the doorjamb to glare at the back of his brother’s head where it was stuck inside the open fridge. “Have you lost your mind? He broke in to my house and took my _clothes_ , Hashirama. I knew he was crazy but I didn’t know he was insane!”

“Aren’t those the same thing?” Hashirama reappeared with a stalk of celery in one hand and a thoughtful pout on his face. Snatching his head back, Tobirama snorted.

“Maybe,” he grumbled to himself reluctantly.

It didn’t matter to him which insulting word he used to describe Madara; what mattered was that his clan pride had been attacked and that was not something he could let go of. He could bear any amount of insults against his own person but his family was an off-limits topic. Since the construction of the village, all the people from different clans had been surprisingly well behaved once they made it past the rocky first few months, studiously avoiding offenses aimed at the stereotypes they all held about each other, and it was one of the few unspoken rules which helped keep the peace. Even Madara had followed that rule, surprisingly enough – until now.

Despite the fact that him staying in a separate room should have told his sibling that he didn’t wish to talk about it, Hashirama still raised his voice to shout at him from the kitchen.

“But he had a reason for that, Tobi! If you would only talk to him and give him a chance to explain everything that’s been going on – it’s all very sweet actually.”

“Sweet!? Did you just use the word sweet to describe Madara? Are we still talking about the same person?”

“He is! Come on! Please? For me? Promise you’ll at least hear him out!”

“I will have you know that I am agreeing to this under duress,” Tobirama shouted, still refusing to go in to the kitchen so they could have a proper, calm conversation. “We both know if I don’t go talk to the ass then you’re never going to shut up about it.” He groaned quietly when he heard a muted gasp of delight from the next room.

“Yay! Thank you little brother! You won’t regret it!”

Rubbing at the bridge of his nose, Tobirama grumbled under his breath, “I already do.”

Still, he wouldn’t mind an explanation if there was a _good_ one to be had, not just some pathetic excuse. It would be nice to finally figure out what had sparked off this strange, one-sided prank war between them and determine what exactly Madara intended to accomplish with it. Did he just miss the ‘good old days’ when he was allowed to vent his hatred in more violent ways? Were the pranks a substitute for that?

If nothing else, Tobirama hoped that speaking to Madara about it would cure him of this incredibly annoying crush he seemed to have developed over the course of all the madness. He wondered what it said about him that he was developing an attraction to a man who fed him charcoal and set fire to public buildings.

Nothing good, probably.

 

**-**

It was much more difficult than Madara was willing to admit just to force his face away from a pleading kicked puppy expression the moment Tobirama walked in to his office. He hadn’t seen the man in two days, not since their relationship had blown up in his face, and he had the most disturbing urge to throw himself down on his knees and beg. He would never do so of course but the urge was there and he took a moment to marvel at how much he had changed for love in such a short amount of time.

At first Tobirama didn’t speak, merely stood there with closed-off body language and a very attractive scowl on his face. Madara opted not to speak either in case he accidentally offered some new offense. On second thought, he might actually beg if Tobirama asked him to.

Hashirama, in an hours long conversation filled with numerous mortifying revelations, had informed him that the rest of the clans did not, in fact, share the same courting rituals as the Uchiha practiced. Evidently Tobirama had been completely unaware of his intentions the entire time. Just the thought of how badly he had unknowingly exposed himself made him want to cringe in his chair but Madara forced himself to stay upright. The last thing he needed now was to give his estranged not-quite-actually-lover the impression that he was a coward.

“Brother tells me we need to talk,” Tobirama broke the silence at last. “Apparently you have good reasons for all the pranks you’ve been pulling on me for the last little while.”

“They were not pranks!” Madara burst, hands fisting with indignation. All of his wonderful gestures devalued to some silly pranks; now that was an insult!

“Well then what the hell were they? You’ve got five minutes to explain yourself.”

It took two hours to explain himself.

Tobirama interrupted with a lot more questions than his older brother had and with much more frequent exclamations of disbelief. Madara bore it all as patiently as he was able to yet by the end of the second hour he was as frustrated as his chosen and once he allowed his temper to slip the first time they very quickly descended in to old familiar rhythms of bickering.

“You’re so obtuse!” he found himself shouting, not sure when he had marched around the front of his desk to shove his finger in to Tobirama’s chest. Tobirama glared back at him.

“Me? How was I supposed to know that you were throwing things at my head because you liked watching me catch them?”

“It was attractive! Competence! Strength!”

“You were _throwing things at my head_!”

“Just take the damn compliment!

“Fuck you!”

“I wish you would!”

Both men stopped short as Madara clapped a hand over his mouth, his cheeks already burning with embarrassment. This wasn’t at all how he’d planned out this conversation in his head; he certainly hadn’t meant to yell, although he really should have expected it to happen. He was rather unfortunately known for screaming his way through life.

A shiver ran down his spine when Tobirama narrowed his eyes dangerously and leaned in until their faces were barely an inch apart. Madara supposed he should have been intimidated – and he was, a little, sort of – but mostly he was just very aroused at the moment.

When a hand shot out to take hold of his collar and pull him closer he closed his eyes, figuring the least he could do for stirring up so much trouble was to allow the other man one free blow. Then he groaned in surprised pleasure when he felt a hot mouth against his own instead of a fist in his eye. It took him less than a second to respond, fumbling to tangle his fingers in the front of Tobirama’s shirt and pulling them even closer together, tilting his head to one side in surrender to the lips working feverishly against his.

It was over much too soon. Between one moment and the next Madara found his fingers empty and his mouth unoccupied. He blinked his eyes open in surprise, confused to find Tobirama already halfway across the room.

Tobirama was looking back over his shoulder with a wicked smirk.

“I know we’re all but engaged in your mind but where I come from you’ll need to take me out on at least one proper date to earn anything more than that,” he said. Madara felt his knees tremble.

“Right. Date. Yes. When?”

“You can pick me up this evening at seven o’clock.”

“Right! Date! Yes!”

With one more flash of an amused look, Tobirama was gone.

Madara melted backwards on to whatever surfaced happened to be behind him, unsure if it was a chair or the edge of his desk and not caring in the slightest. He had a date with Tobirama tonight. They both officially understood each other and they were going on a date tonight.

Then he was leaping up in a state of panic and rushing out the door as well, destination the other end of the hallway. Would fire lilies be a considered a good gift in the Senju clan? Did they even bring each other flowers at all? He had so many questions, so many details which might be different between their two sets of traditions, but he knew one thing for certain that he would not be swayed on.

If Hashirama laughed at even one of his questions Madara was going to burn him to a cinder.


	8. Chapter 8

If there was one thing Hashirama had learned over the past month it was that spying on his little brother wasn’t half as fun when his spying went entirely unnoticed. Where was he supposed to get his entertainment from if Tobirama wasn’t going to get all flustered and yell at him for invading their privacy? He hadn’t even gone to the effort to infuse enough chakra to sense the area around him, too distracted by his new relationship to care much about his surroundings, apparently. How boring.

They were pretty cute together, though. Hashirama took another peek around the tree he was hiding behind, ignoring the disappointment that neither of the two men he was spying on had noticed him even once in the past hour.

He didn’t understand why they wouldn’t just give in and cuddle. Spread out on a blanket with a wicker basket of refreshments near their feet, they were sitting so close together they were nearly up in each other’s laps already; what would it hurt for one of them to throw their arm around the other? Madara had tried to say something about decorum when he asked but they appeared to believe they were all alone out here so he wondered what their excuse was now.

Not that the lack of actual cuddling stopped the whole scene from being almost sickeningly sweet – by their standards. Hashirama noticed that they had at least given in to holding hands, although he would have preferred it if they could perhaps stare romantically in to each other’s eyes for a while. Instead they were bickering over one of the topics that had been covered in last night’s meeting with the newly formed Educational Review Board. Why couldn’t they just say sweet things to each other or recite poetry or compare each other to pretty flowers like any normal romantic human beings? If it had worked for him then surely it would work for the two of them, he liked to think, but every time he suggested that kind of thing he was scoffed at as though he’d said something ridiculous.

Shaking his head, Hashirama wondered if he should interrupt their date and inform them that they were doing it wrong. His little Tobi never seemed particularly upset when he came home from their dates, despite the fact that they usually spent most of the time bickering with each other. Actually he always looks sort of floaty. It looked like the way Hashirama had felt after his first few dates with Mito except they never seemed to do anything romantic enough to warrant such love-struck faces.

He was still waffling back and forth when Madara seemed to lunge forward without warning, pressing Tobirama down in to the grass. Just as Hashirama moved to burst out and defend his sibling he heard one of them moan and realized what was happened. Flushing, he turned and slipped away through the trees as quietly as possible. Apparently they didn’t need any help right now.

 

**-**

Izuna heaved a sigh as he floated from one room of the house to another, more bored than he thought was possible and unbearably impatient for his sibling to come home.  It still fascinated him that after a full month during which they were both – this time – aware of the fact that they were in a relationship they still were not married. Were they both Uchiha they would have been engaged within a week and married within another. And that was pushing it!

Once an Uchiha set their mind on a person they were not to be deterred. That was how it had always been and how he thought it would always stay. What he never expected was for the customs of the other clans to be so different from his own. Certainly he had expected a few subtle differences here and there, perhaps different traditional recipes or maybe different flowers exchanged during the spring festivals, but he could never have guessed there would be gaps this wide in their knowledge of each other. It gave him a much better appreciation for how well his sibling was handling it all.

As though summoned by thoughts of himself, Madara stumbled through door in a distracted manner which had become all too familiar of late. Izuna was on him in seconds.

“Did you two have fun?” he asked. “Details, brother; I’m living vicariously though you, remember?”

“Of course we had fun,” Madara snipped, visibly annoyed at having his head pulled down from the clouds. Izuna tutted at him and followed as he tried to escape through to the kitchen.

“That isn’t very detailed.”

“Well Tobi says it isn’t proper to talk about things like this with other people.”

As the older man hid his face inside a cupboard, Izuna leered at him. “Ooh, he’s finally letting you call him Tobi now, eh? Spicy.”

“It is _not_ ‘spicy’.”

“Whatever. You can tell me something small about your date, though, right? I don’t need all the gory details but give me something! Anything! Until I find someone who can punch me in the face like Tobirama can sock you one, you guys are the closest I’m gonna get to true love.”

His wheedling was rewarded when Madara’s face ascended back in to the dreamy state it had been in when he first arrived home, his hands unconsciously clutching at the mug he had pulled down.

“That man argues like he was born for it,” Madara sighed fondly. “He had a counter-argument for every single point I brought up about specialized education for the children of different clans. Could not be cornered. He was made for me.”

“Damn. I have to say, I’m kinda jealous.”

“As you should be. You’ll never find anyone as amazing as my Tobi.”

“Well I wouldn’t go that far.” Izuna grinned as Madara’s offended look.

For once in his life deciding to grant his brother a modicum of peace, Izuna leaned back in his chair and simply smiled at the man for a few moments, watching him go through the motions of making tea with an unconscious smile on his face. It was as if all the stress he’d been carrying around for years simply disappeared bit by bit the more time he spent with his beau. Izuna might have found it strange that they were dragging things out for as long as they were – especially considering how obvious it was that they were perfect for one another – but it wasn’t really his place to say anything so long as the two of them were happy.

And they _were_ happy, obviously. Izuna grinned as his brother missed his cup entirely and poured tea all over the counter while he was too busy mooning out the window. They might be idiots but they were idiots in love. Everything had turned out just fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh no the final chapter! Thank you all for so many comments and so much enthusiasm! :D

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [You're an asshole but I love you. ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15108536) by [Betsunichan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Betsunichan/pseuds/Betsunichan)




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